Lost
by embrace-insanity
Summary: A group of people get lost in Gotham and run into some trouble. The Joker shows up later, I promise, but not yet. Please read! Rated T for violence and language.


Okay, so, do you know how hard it is to maneuver the streets of Gotham? It's _hard. _I have a map propped up in a weird position so I can see it while I'm driving, my boyfriend has a map, my brother in the backseat has a map, and I think my brother's girlfriend might be on the phone with her mom trying to figure things out. And we haven't gotten anywhere.

"Are we all idiots?" I have to keep asking over and over again. It seems like the only possible explanation for why I feel we've passed that building for the seventeenth time.

"Yeah." Ira, my boyfriend, is completely confident in his answer. "I was starting to suspect it, but now I think I pretty much know."

I honestly can't remember why we wanted to visit Gotham, anyway. Something with Ira being tired of all of the nature-y places we always visited, I think. And something about wanting to visit the "big city", even though we only lived 45 minutes out from Chicago. So basically, I knew his reasons were total crap—he was probably just waiting for a glimpse of Batman, or better, The Joker. What other reason was there for my superhero-obsessed brother to tag along? In fact, the duo were probably working together to feed me the wrong directions, so we'd end up stumbling into The Joker having to be rescued. Did Batman even waste his time with frazzled tourists?

My brother's girlfriend, Tiffany, threw down her phone and made an annoyed clicking noise in the back of her throat. "My mom's no help. She kept telling me to take Park. Is there a Park on the map? Have you seen a Park at _any_ point during this drive?"

The collective response was an annoyed, "No."

"She probably thought we were still in Illinois." My brother Sam piped up. "Or in Alaska. Or maybe on Mars."

Tiffany whapped him lightly. "Don't blame it on her, blame it on your lousy map reading."

"Guys." I broke up the conversation as the city got increasingly seedy around me. I had to admit that I got a little impatient when I was driving, especially when everyone around me seemed to be off track. Did they even realize where we were? We were in a city literally crawling with people from an asylum that couldn't keep its doors shut. I mean, I had gotten that out of the guidebook. And it was called Gotham, for god sakes. If it wasn't depressing enough already, that sure did the trick.

"I need you to keep feeding me instructions, got it? Just give me guesses, I don't care. Cuz' I don't think the hotel's in…uh…this district." It definitely wasn't. Around us, buildings were crumbled and half destroyed, with their windows taped up and graffiti covering most everything else. A few huge warehouses were the tallest things around, and the pavement and sidewalk were faded and cracked. It was like the entire population had died out, and then the place had just slowly been reclaimed by dirt and grime.

"Hey, they said the hotel had a lake view, didn't they?" Ira gestured over towards the strip of lake we could see towards our far right, which was littered with trash and seemed to be filled with oil and other types of undesirable gunk.

"Shut up and tell me how to get out of here." I hissed, ignoring Ira as he chuckled to himself.

"Anna, you gotta lighten up." I ignored that too, and everyone got back to looking at the maps.

"I think you're gonna wanna go straight up here and then make a right." Sam told me from the backseat.

"On what street?"

"I don't know."

"Awesome." I rolled my eyes.

"Hey, stop!" Tiffany called all of a sudden. I slammed on the brakes of my Sonata, sending all of us catapulting forward and then catapulting back.

"WHAT?!?" I was already past the point of nervous irritation, which was very dangerous for everyone in the car with me. If somebody stopped me for anything less than the end of the world, I could completely lose it.

"I just…there's a guy there…we could ask him for directions, maybe." I turned my head fiercely to look where she was pointing, and saw a man sitting on the street corner, looking down at the ground. He looked so sad, so dreary, and so in place with the surroundings.

"Yeah, you go ask him, Tiff." Ira gave her a look that was basically asking her if she was completely nuts. "If you really want to."

"Oh my god, do it." Sam said excitedly. "Maybe that's the Joker, and then you can get kidnapped, and then we can see some friggin awesome battle moves from Batman." I turned back to look at the face of my brother, who appeared to have turned into a fourteen year old boy obsessed with the very prospect of anyone in a mask who could kill someone, which is exactly what he had been a long time ago.

Ira perked up immeiditely. "That'd be _soooo_ cool! That is, if he didn't fill you with his ideals and then mutilate you." We all cringed at that one.

Tiffany turned around. "He's not that bad, is he? He's just a guy who can think for himself." She was the type of person who defended everyone, who thought that nobody should be subject to unfair hatred. This was noble and really annoying.

"Tiffany, he's the _Joker. _Did you see that video on the news the other day? With that poor Brian kid? Did you see his clothes, his make-up, his scars? He can think for himself, alright, and he's smart about it, but he's also _crazy._" Sam said to Tiffany, giving her the same look that Ira had given her earlier.

Ira reached back and pushed Tiffany towards the door a little bit, trying to lighten the mood. "Go on, now. Go get yourself kidnapped by a psychopath."

Tiffany laughed and made fake sad eyes at Sam, going along with the mood change. "What, you don't care about my safety? You would put me, your one true love, in the hands of a criminal mastermind?"

"Yeah. If I could see a car explode." The two guys high-fived, and then started acting out some sort of a gunfight.

I suddenly pulled the car over to the other side of the road, parallel parking.

"What're you doing?" Ira put his hands on my shoulders gently. "Do you want me to drive?"

"No. Just go ask the guy for directions."

Tiffany spoke up from the back. "Anna, I was just kid—"

"Go."

My brother sighed. "This is how she gets when she drives, all wound up and stuff. Even when she used to drive me to the 7-11 when we were kids. Just ignore her."

Ira laughed. "God, you shoulda seen her when we were driving up the Rockies last year. She yelled at a _squirrel, _and then nearly drove us over the side of the mountain. And yet…she just can't hand it over, can she?"

"Hey guys, I'm right here. And if you idiots can't read a map to me, then we really have no choice but to ask this lovely Gothamite and possible rapist where we are." I wished I could calm myself down.

"Jesus, he's not a rapist. Don't be a hater." Tiffany also stood up for people by saying "Don't be a hater" to about 700 people everyday.

"Then go ask him for directions." I unlocked the doors for her. "Go on. Get out."

Tiffany slowly opened the door, throwing back an unsure glance at everyone else. Sam climbed through the open door, following her.

"If we die," he said, "I'm going to kill you."

"Yeah, yeah! Let us know when you get in with the Joker." Ira called as the door was slammed shut. I turned to him.

"So what's up with this Joker guy?" I asked him as I watched Tiffany and Sam cross the street, looking like they were going to do some dangerous and confidential business.

Ira's eyes bugged out of his head. "I know you've heard of him. He's on the news like everyday. He's _the _psychopathic murderer. He's the Zodiac. He's Jack the Ripper. He's like something out of a movie. I mean, he has a "the" in front of his name. You just don't see that everyday."

"Oh, I know who he is. Everyone does, with all the crap he's pulling. I just…I mean…_who is he?_ What does he even want? What's with the whole clown get-up?" I knew that Ira was a nut about heroes and villains, comic books, the whole shebang, just like Sam was. And I knew what the answers were to my questions, partially thanks to 24 hour news networks and partially because of what Ira had already excitedly told me about the guy. But I guess I just wanted to keep Ira talking about something he was passionate about. Since the effects of driving were wearing off in the parked car, I was feeling pretty guilty about sending my friends out to go and meet with some random guy on the street. The Joker was a good thing to talk about. He was worse than I could ever be.

Ira was just about to talk when Sam and Tiffany reached the man.

"Oh, wait." He paused in a dramatic silence, gesturing over to the group. I cringed in anticipation of the meeting.

Sam held an arm around Tiffany, pulling his jacket tight around himself in the autumn chill. He said something to the man, and then Tiffany said something, but the man didn't look up. I could see Tiffany turn to Sam and ask him something, their faces becoming slightly pale. Then Sam reached in and tapped the man on the shoulder, lightly, skittishly.

Suddenly, the man roared up at the two, making Ira and I scream in the panicked frenzy of the moment. The man had Sam by the arm, and in the other, I saw as my eyes pulled themselves tightly open and my breathing got sharp, a gun. Ira was shouting at me, but I couldn't move.

"GODDAMIT WHY'D YOU TELL THEM TO GO OUT THERE OH MY GOD PULL THE DAMN CAR UP START THE CAR START THE CAR HELP THEM!!!!!!!" He shrieked the words at me, but I couldn't put them together. I just stared at the scene across the street, where the man, a grungy guy of maybe around 35, with some apparent physical strength, had my brother trapped. He flailed his gun around angrily, pointing it at Sam's head and at Tiffany, who had somehow been knocked to the ground. The look in the man's eyes wasn't right, something I had heard people say before but never actually seen.

Ira was bashing into all sorts of things as he tried to climb into my seat. "MOVE!!!!!!" He finally shouted as he pushed me out of the way, turning the key and gunning the car forward towards Tiffany, Sam, and the man. Everyone looked startled as the car roared up, even Tiffany, who was crying and pleading on the ground. The man got angrier at Sam as the getaway car pulled up. He thrashed my brother around, sending him to his knees on the pavement and pointing the gun at his forehead. Ira fumbled the door open and started to get out, but the man raised the gun warningly towards him and shot out the back window, so he backed off. The gunshot was the loudest and scariest thing I had ever heard in my life, turning me into a shivering pile of anxiety as I struggled to cover my head from the fragments of glass flying around.

The man placed the gun back to the exact center of Sam's forehead. With the window gone, I could hear all of the conversation as I ducked down in the backseat, thinking I should be screaming or crying or trying to call someone but doing nothing. _Move, _I urged myself. But I couldn't. I was in a place where I felt like I could see everything and sense everything, but where I wasn't physically attached to anything around me. I was useless.

Sam was shaking. "Don't worry, Tiffany, sweetheart, baby, please don't worry…" He sounded like he was trying to soothe himself, and it wasn't working. The man held the gun tightly.

"She should be worried." He said, and he smacked the side of Sam's head with the gun. Tiffany screamed on the ground and Ira stood frozen, as did I. A scream ripped through my insides, and my outsides became jerky and jittery. That was my brother, I finally seemed to realize. My brother. And he was hurt.

Sam fell to the ground, moaning at the pain but either too scared or too hurt to get up again. Blood was splattered on the sidewalk. The man leaned over Sam, pointing the gun down at his head once again.

"You don't _EVER _touch me. Ever, you hear that?" He said harshly, kicking him in the chest. "Now go with your little friends, okay? If I ever see you again, I'll kill you all. I swear by it. I promise to god. Don't touch me. Don't. Touch. Me." The man ran off abruptly, and Tiffany crawled over to Sam's side, screaming at the man in a terrified, shattered voice. I looked down the street at the man, who turned back only to shoot his gun in the air, making us all duck and fall silent. Then, he disappeared.

"Jesus, Sam, Jesus. Are you alright, are you alright? We're gonna get you to the hospital, okay?" Ira bubbled out phrases as he lifted Sam with Tiffany's help and put him into the back of the car. Tiffany never left his side, trying to wrap his bleeding head wound in a ripped off bit from Ira's shirt. Seeing my brother like that, a boy I had known even throughout the times that he would never remember, seemed to pull me back into the world of the living. I punched the seat of the car and then the window angrily.

How could someone do that to my brother, the ten year old who had a strange love of putting too many ice cubes in drinks? How could someone do that to the teen who had tried so pitifully to get me to read comic books that we still laughed about it today? How could they do that to Sam? I had never had the opportunity to feel this much pain. Never. It made me think of the Joker, of what he did to people. How couldn't he feel pain? How couldn't he feel anything? If I ever met him, I would ask him. I would definitely ask the bastard. Sam, barely conscious, put his hand on my arm.

"Shhh, Anna, shhhh…" Ira was comforting me as bitter tears started to run down my cheeks. Ira was crying too. I could tell he was freaking out about something. He checked his cell phone screen.

"Shit! I don't have any bars. But we gotta call the police or someone…shit! I can't get my call out…Jesus, where's the Bat?"

I tried to calm myself down as I shakily looked at my own cell phone. "I don't have anything either." I told everyone, my stomach plummeting down into an absolutely terrified place. What if Sam died? What if I had caused his death? "Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus..."

Tiffany had her cell phone with her, but her hands wouldn't let her pick it up. I picked it up and looked at it for her, trying to find a sense of courage where there wasn't one.

"It's dead. Tiff, your phone's dead." Tears ran down her face and mine.

"Jesus fuck holy Jesus shit!" Ira repeated, almost chanting. "We gotta find a hospital. WHERE'S THE FUCKING BAT???"

I looked around quickly, surveying the surroundings. Where were the hospitals? How could we ever manage to find one?

Ira had started up the car and was driving around wildly, trying to find his bearings. We rode up the curb on the other side of the street, then knocked over a garbage can and nearly missed a streetlight. Sam groaned in the background.

"I'm sorry, buddy…" Ira's hands were shaking as he finally got the car turned in the right direction, flooring it and making a quick, dangerous turn.

"Keep checking your signal." Ira ordered me as he drove well over the speed limit on the Gotham street, becoming slightly more clear-headed. I did as I was told, noticing how we were slowly making our way to the better part of town. Then a sign that I vaguely caught a glimpse of snapped my head up.

"I just saw a sign, I think Gotham General's four miles from here."

"Are you sure?"

"I don't know!!!!!! Drive the car and we'll see!!!!!!!"

Ira sped up even further, and, sure enough, the Gotham General sign gleamed ahead of us.

"We're here, baby…we're here…" Tiffany mumbled to Sam, who was already unconscious. Ira threw the car into a parking space and leapt out along with me.

"I don't know what to do. Do we move him?" He asked, pacing nervously around the car.

"We're at a hospital! I'll go get someone." I ran in, nearly tripping over my feet as I entered the main office. I screamed at anyone who was listening, "We need help!!!"

I was immediately followed by a group of two people, who I led back to Sam.

One of them had brought a gurney, and lifted Sam onto it, arranging various medical equipment around his chest.

One of the guys started rattling off questions to me, and I tried to answer him but couldn't really hear what he was saying. Tiffany, Ira, and I followed the men as they led us into the hospital. We stopped as we reached one of the white, sterile, identical hospital rooms. The doctors didn't seem to be as panicked as we were, so the condition probably wasn't that serious. That should have calmed me, but it didn't.

"Where are you from?" Was the first question I actually heard.

"Illinois. Chicago area. Is Sam gonna be okay?" I wasn't in the mood to be clear. They could figure out what I meant.

"He—uh, Sam—just has some head trauma, nothing serious. You said he got hit over the head, right?" Did I say that? I nodded anyway.

"With what, exactly? Oh wait, let me guess..." Great, let's play guessing games.

"Probably a gun, right?"

I shivered just thinking about it. "Yeah." How many times did this happen in Gotham?

"We call that a Gotham Welcome." I was starting not to like this guy. Luckily, he left quickly with his partner, telling us that a nurse would be in shortly.

"God, oh my god…" Ira fell into a chair and put his hands over his head. "I…never wanted this to happen…I mean, I joked about it and everything, but…" He got angrier. "Who runs this city?!?! How do they let this happen to innocent people???"

"I'm not innocent." I told him, the full guilt of the situation catching up with me. "I'm the one who got us lost and then made my own brother go and talk to some random crazy on the street. He could've gotten killed."

Ira walked over to me. "It was all of us who got lost. And you couldn't possibly have known that the guy would pull a gun."

"I didn't know, but I should've guessed. You don't just…you don't do that to your brother, to your friends. You don't make them go out and face danger like that alone." Ira knew I was right. Quietly, he sat back down in the chair and started whispering softly to Tiffany, soothing her.

I thought of what the doctor said. _We call that a Gotham Welcome. _Staring blankly at Sam and trying not to meet the dead eyes of Tiffany, feeling pricks of shame all over my skin, I knew we had officially been greeted.


End file.
